Today's work

Here's the piece of my second Mythaca book I wrote today.

In this book, the magical beasts are in the children's world where they are very small and there's little magic.

X

Magellan is awake. He is wet! In fact, he feels as if he’s floating! A slight shift of his right shoulder reveals that he is tied down tightly. What? he thinks. Where am I? He opens his eyes. It seems he is bound to something flat which is tied to a post at the edge of some water. The smell is just terrible. He can barely breathe. Above him he can see the massive limbs of a monstrous tree, a tree with leaves yen times the size of an ordinary tree or even larger. It is dark, or perhaps dawn is barely breaking, but under the gigantic leaves it is very dark indeed. He is cold. With some effort he discovers he can move his neck and head. When he turns his head a little, he can see the backs of a small group of furry fellows about his own size, standing together and talking excitedly, but he cannot understand a word of what they are saying.

It is the rats, of course. They are resting after the ordeal of bringing Magellan this far. Carrying such a heavy creature through the plumbing was hard enough, but pulling him out of the septic tank was almost impossible. First they thought they could get him out through the pipes to the leach field, but he was too big. So they were forced to drag him up the side of the tank and out the top. Crossing the field was extremely dangerous, but fortunately the owl must have been busy somewhere else. Now they have Magellan tied securely to a piece of wood, floating in the creek. As soon as they finished eating and having their meeting, Radicchio and Harvey will float him downstream to the main nest.

“I’ve never seen one before either,” Harvey is sneering at Butch, “but that doesn’t mean I think it’s from another dimension. Other dimensions! Anybody with a hair on his body knows that’s nonsense!”

Butch says, “I dunno, Harvey. I ain’t so sure. Don’t you watch TV? I saw on a show the other night that...”

“Butch! You can’t believe what you see on TV!” Radicchio interrupts roughly. “You know well as I do that humans got no handle on truth, no handle at all.” He wags his head. “Why, they’ll put anything on TV, things that couldn’t ever happen! You know that! So why are thinking all of sudden that there’s other dimensions?”

“ It’s the same as when he got the whole bunch of us trying to get ahold of a catalog for the Acme Explosive Company. We must of robbed a hundred mailboxes,” adds Ralf. “But that show was all lies. There’s no coyote, there’s no Acme Explosive Company. They don’t exist. It’s all a lie.”

A little belligerently, Butch says, “Well, you guys don’t know what kind of animal it is either. You got no idea. You just wanna take it back to the nest and let it die and rot. You don’t even care what it is, or if maybe there’s something else we could get out of it besides another carcass.”

“I like carcasses,” pipes up Joey, the youngest of them. It is his first night out with the men.

“Me, too,” says Harvey. “And I think this is a dumb discussion. There is no such thing as other dimensions and that’s it. The discussion is over.” Harvey’s whiskers are trembling a little. He’s gonna lose it any minute, Ralf thinks nervously.

“Well, that’s what you would'a said yesterday about min’ature horses wit’ wings!” Butch points out. “And today we got one!” He isn’t ready to let it go.

Magellan can’t understand any of this, but he can tell they’re arguing. It doesn’t seem like they’re paying him any attention at all. He wonders if there’s some way he can escape. It won’t be easy, naturally, but after all, he is Magellan, the same Magellan who has flown around the world too many times to count, Magellan, the true discoverer of Mythaca. It should be possible. He begins to stretch his neck gently, trying to get his teeth onto to the rope.

* * *
Paracelsus is sleeping comfortably in his nest when he hears the call. Who can it be, calling at this time of night! Heavens, he thinks, I am being drawn right there! It must be an important call! He fades out of his nest, tail to wings, horn to whiskers, and then he finds himself emerging from some large, damp fabric (a towel perhaps?) on the floor of Marianna’s room.

“Oh, Paracelsus!” “You came back! Thank you!” “We’re so glad to see you!” the children cry out on top of one another when they see him.

“Eh?” grumbles Paracelsus, shaking out his wings one at a time “What is it you want? We worked everything out already as far as I can see.”

“No, it didn’t work out, see.” “Magellan disappeared!” they say together.

“Of course, he did! I used a spell to send him home to his meadow. No doubt he is there, grazing happily, at this very moment.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” says Marianna releasing a great sigh. “Of course you would do that!”

Ivan agrees, “Gosh, that is a relief! We thought maybe that’s what had happened, but when I saw that Amanas had some of Magellan’s feathers, we got worried that maybe he was still around here somewhere, hurt and all.”

“No, no,” Paracelsus assures him. “You should know by now that my spells never fail. You’ve seen the evidence! Rest assured that Magellan is safe in his meadow. Safe as he can be. Safe and sound. Sound? I wonder how his wing is. Well, I will check in when I am done here. Now, why did you call me?”

Ivan looks up in surprise. “Well, because of Magellan, of course!”

The small dragon begins to pace in a circle. “No, I’m afraid not. No, that isn’t the reason. It can’t be. I never come if there’s no reason, you understand? Some very real possibility, good or bad, the potential of some danger or some breakthrough, that’s what draws me. Not to tell you that Magellan is safe. No, that’s not enough, I’m quite certain. Unless things are changing, of course. Things are always changing, you understand. That is a particularly profound bit of wisdom. Things are always changing. So, now, what is the real reason you called me?”